Windows 7 Professional HP OA ISO

[Rhothgar]

Thanks Paul. 
However, I am in a much darker place now. 
have changed BIOS To RAID+AHCI, wiped the disk but now it doesn’t appear for windows reinstall. 

It has reappeared when I’ve changed back to AHCI but then vanishes again when changed to RAID+AHCI. 

Have tried diskpart to try and resolve but have limited experience with that. A bit more research is required. 

Thanks for the specific driver links. That is incredibly helpful. 

My mistake iro SP1. I’ve just always known or experienced driver install for hardware being automatic. 

[Rhothgar]

And I have only just gone and wiped the iso USB by accident!  It's NOT my day!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

W7 probably does not have the storage controller drivers needed to 'see' the hard drive in the AHCI + RAID mode.

I have zipped up and attached what I believe are the correct storage drivers you need for W7 to 'see' the drive.

It should be one of the two folders.

Unzip the files to their folders.  Copy the folders to a USB flash drive and when you get to the part where W7 does not see the drive, click on the Load Driver option on the bottom left side of the window, and browse to the folder with the storage controller drivers on it.

If you check the box, it should only include the compatible driver.

Hopefully, W7 will then see the drive and install.

[TedMittelstaedt]

You only use AHCI+RAID when you have 2 identical hard disks in the machine and you want to software mirror them using the HP supplied driver that mirrors the disks instead of the operating system driver that mirrors the disks.

However the reality is that the operating system's fakeraid mirroring driver used in AHCI only mode is just as fast as HP's mirroring driver used in AHCI+RAID mode

The reason this situation exists is because you can't do a software fakeraid from Windows that you can boot from.

The reason HP motherboards default to AHCI+RAID is so that if the user puts a second drive in there they can setup either mirroring or striping in the BIOS then boot a windows install CD which will silently select the fakeraid driver and allow the person to install a copy of windows that will boot off the mirror

Operating systems like Linux DO allow you to create a software fakeraid during installation that will allow you to boot the RAID array so for them you do NOT use AHCI+RAID in the BIOS when you have multiple disks.

With just a single disk, it is best to select AHCI mode because the specialty SATA chipset drivers may not be present in all versions of any operating system you might try to load.

[Rhothgar]

Thanks Paul.

I was looking for drivers on the Samsung site and couldn't find any!! 😕

I'm guessing I do not need the SAS controller because it presumably is for a separate RAID card?

The latter poster makes some good points about RAID+AHCI.

Normally most people start with a plan of what they want out of their system.  I, however, am just trying to feel my way through.

[Rhothgar]

Thanks for your input, TedMittelstaedt

Your response addresses one of my main issues and areas of indecision. How do I want to use the machine?

Whilst I am toying with 'upgrading' back to Windows 7 as an OS, I also have used Windows 10 of late and do like the interface.  I want to be able to overclock the processor even slightly for a performance advantage by using Intel XTU software.

I also want to ensure all data is secure.  I used to run a RAID machine many years ago but do wonder if many others will use this for backup with Windows 10 having OneDrive these days.  Naturally that isn't as quick.

Your post has left me thinking should I, can I, run identical SSD's as a stripe volume and two identical HDD's for storage as mirrored volumes and then could I use Windows Backup to backup to the storage side of things.  If one SDD goes down, you lose your OS but can it be recovered from a mirror volume back to either a single SSD or a striped volume of 2?

And with OneDrive, documents and pictures are located on the OS, so is data integrity assured from striped volumes?

These questions delve much further into RAID than my knowledge spans.  Back in the day, there was only RAID 0, 1 and 2 if my memory serves me correctly.  Now it is much extended.

According to Wikipedia, Intel RST is classed as "fake raid" and RAID 5 seems to be the way to go according to that article too which then requires 3 HDD's.

I may revert back to AHCI today as I did get it up and running with RAID+AHCI but only on Windows 10.  I had understood that speed advantages could be gained by using RAID+AHCI.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

I just like a clean device manager.

The SAS controller may be an Intel device and not an add-on controller.

You would have to look up the hardware ID to determine if the driver I posted is for that controller, because the Intel driver was the driver I posted for it.